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It was the first outward show of magical power I had seen so baldly performed, and it fascinated me how easily it had come to her. She hadn’t even tried.

“You, my dear, have secrets piling up around you and near to burying you. First things first, though, why have you not called on me?” She set her teacup down and leaned on her elbow toward me. “I haven’t felt a single shiver in the beads I sent you with.”

I paused in the greedy chewing of the piece of bread I had shoved in my mouth the moment Silver slipped out of the door. “What do you mean?” I asked around a mouthful of crust.

“Manners, dear.” She sipped her tea while I swallowed the lump. “I’ve kept myself on alert, waiting for even the slightest twinge from the boon beads I set with you. And nothing, yet I hear whispers from the palace of you constantly. Why have you not called for me?”

“Bandrui, what the hell are you talking about? I have called for you several times, and you never came. Not even a single time. I crushed the beads, and you never came.”

“Darling girl, I assure you that, had you called for me, I would have appeared immediately. I may have said that I could not be counted on to keep you from all danger, but I assure you that was a bluff to keep you from frivolously using them. I had intended to ride in on a white horse to save you from even a paper cut. But you never called to me. And I had grown convinced that you had turned your heart from me.” She frowned into the edge of the teacup. “You say you broke beads? What did they look like?”

“It’s the same beads you’ve been delivering to me since I arrived! What do you mean what did they look like?”

The Bandrui stilled, seriousness drawing a caul over her. “Cricket. I have not been delivering beads to you since you arrived. The first time I became aware of you was when you were brought to me.”

The room tilted to one side, rose like the bobbing ice on a Michigan lake, and crashed back down into the wake of my mind.

“Wh-What do you—no, you gave them to me. They’ve been—what.”

“Think very carefully, dear one. Do you have the beads on you?”

I nodded sharply and hiked up my skirts, pulling the strand of beads from the makeshift belt. I had rescued them from The Raven’s rooms, where he had set them conspicuously on the bedside table. I set them delicately between us, as if they were a coiled viper and, at any moment, would strike out at me.

Using a butter knife, the Bandrui scooted them closer to her and raised one russet brow. “Which of these three beads did you crush, Cricket? Are there any left of the same kind?”

I nodded. “The little brass stars.”

“Which of the brass stars? There are two here, one that is subtly different from the other.” She separated two beads so similar that, had I not been looking for the subtle dark patina of it, I would not have noticed the difference.

“I . . . I don’t know. I crushed them one after another. But they were all stars. I’m sure of that,” I whispered, fear weaving itself into my body.

Who had I called to me? Whose boon had I snapped?

The Bandrui took up a small jar and sprinkled salt over the little stars then picked the strand up and examined them. “Tell me who came to you when you crushed the beads, dear one.”

“No one came.”

She clucked in the back of her throat. “That is a lie, and to think I thought we were friends. Dearest of friends. He came. He could not help but come to you when you called for him.”

The room was spinning, the thunder of my heart kicking against its enclosure.

“Who.”

She smiled and set the beads down, sliding them back to me. “The Raven of the Dawn.”

Thunder cracked, loud and sharp, across my heart as I looked down to the beads, and she went on. “I can’t tell you who the other star belongs to, a cuach, though they seem not to have ill intentions. But these stars? The vast majority of them? These all radiate with his unique magic I feel the Dawn brushing me even merely touching them. Can you not feel it when you hold them?”

I hesitantly ran my finger over the strand of beads, past the small armored fists and to the string of stars that had been growing day by day as they appeared in my alcove. I hadn’t known what they were when I first arrived. I knew that, every morning, one appeared, and I would tie it to the strand. I knew that I had liked them, that they made me smile when I held them.

“Dear girl, you look like a ghost has slithered into your soul. What is it?” she asked me, but there was a needle to her words, a certain knowing that threaded its way into her words, and she could barely hide the way the corners of her mouth fought to stay still.

“The whole time? The whole time?!” I shot a look up to her. “I’ve been getting these beads every morning since I first arrived. The whole time. Every day. I never knew what they were. I just thought they were pretty little beads. He’s been giving me these the whole time?”

She quietly sipped her tea like a cat who ate the canary, overly smug and pleased with herself.

“You knew?”

“Of course I knew. Do I look daft?” She set her teacup down, leveling me with her gaze. “I’ve known since the moment he brought you from the palace that the man is sick with his need for you. I have known him since he was still suckling at his mother’s breast. He can hide most everything from every other Fae but me? He might as well have shouted it in my ear. I didn’t need to see the desperation and devastation in his face when he brought you here after that ass of a Ard Rí nearly killed you. I didn’t need to see the way he came to your bedside and washed you every day when he had far more pressing duties. I didn’t need to see the way he raged against the Ard Rí as your soul balanced on the precipice of death. I didn’t need to watch the duel for your fate they had when the Ard Rí forbid anyone to watch its outcome. I didn’t need to see the way he bent and broke those around him until they yielded the necessary magic to heal you. I didn’t need to see any of that. I knew from the way dawn crackled on the horizon every morning with its heir growing stronger for his heart’s joy.”